The Influence of the Consumer Ethnocentrism and Cultural
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 04 July 2019 doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00220 The Influence of the Consumer Ethnocentrism and Cultural Familiarity on Brand Preference: Evidence of Event-Related Potential (ERP) Qingguo Ma 1,2,3*, H’meidatt Mohamed Abdeljelil 1 and Linfeng Hu 2,4 1School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, 2Institute of Neural Management Sciences, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China, 3Academy of Neuroeconomics and Neuromanagement, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China, 4School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China The tendency of customers’ preference to their local brands over the foreign ones is known as consumer ethnocentrism, and it is an important issue in international marketing. This study aims at identifying the behavioral and neural correlates of Consumer Ethnocentrism in the field of brand preference, using event-related potential (ERP). We sampled subjects from two ethnic groups, a Chinese ethnic group and a sub-Saharan Black African group from Zhejiang University. The subjects faced two sequential stimuli, S1 followed by S2. S1 consisted of 40 pictures of 20 Chinese and 20 Black Africans people wearing traditional clothes, and S2 consisted of 40 fake brand-logos which were divided randomly into two groups of 20 each. The subjects were informed that the people in S1 purchased and recommended the products with the brand-logos presented in S2, and the subjects were asked to rate their preference degree toward these logos. The brand-logos were called the “in-group recommended Edited by: logos” if the recommenders in S1 were the same race as the subjects, otherwise, the Peter Lewinski, University of Oxford, United Kingdom “out-group recommended logos.” The results revealed that the race of the brand-logo Reviewed by: recommender highly impacted the Chinese subjects’ preference for the brand-logos. Chunliang Feng, The N200 component elicited by the in-group recommended logos were significantly Beijing Normal University, China lower than those elicited by the out-group recommended logos. Additionally, there was Vincenzo Russo, Università IULM, Italy evidence that being familiar with foreign cultures reduced consumer ethnocentrism. The *Correspondence: African subjects were familiar with Chinese people and adopted a Chinese culture, as Qingguo Ma a result, they did not differ in showing preferences between the in-group and out-group [email protected] recommended logos. Received: 29 November 2018 Keywords: event-related potential, N200, consumer ethnocentrism, preference, neuromarketing, Accepted: 17 June 2019 neuromanagement, branding, purchase intention Published: 04 July 2019 Citation: Ma Q, Abdeljelil HM and Hu L INTRODUCTION (2019) The Influence of the Consumer Ethnocentrism and Cultural Familiarity on Brand Preference: Evidence of Consumer’s tendency to buy a locally made good over a foreign product is known as consumer Event-Related Potential (ERP). ethnocentrism (de Ruyter et al., 1998; Moon and Jain, 2002; Rand et al., 2009; Jiménez and Front. Hum. Neurosci. 13:220. San Martín, 2010). This conceptual phenomenon leads to making purchasing decisions that doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00220 do not only depend on price-quality but also depend on the criterion of where the product Frontiers in Human Neuroscience| www.frontiersin.org 1 July 2019 | Volume 13 | Article 220 Ma et al. Neural Response to Consumer Ethnocentrism comes from (Garmatjuk and Parts, 2015). Ethnocentrism is between familiar and unfamiliar faces (Jemel et al., 2003; Tanaka originally a sociological concept, and it shows the relationship et al., 2006). However, some previous studies suggested that between a group to which an individual belongs (in-group) and the N250 elicited by familiar faces was connected solely to one the group that the individual does not belong to (out-group; semantic process which was related to familiar face identification de Ruyter et al., 1998). A group is not limited to a social or (Bentin and Deouell, 2000), while during the interaction of racial segregation but could also be any other organization that familiarity and facial expression processing the familiar faces an individual feels apart of, such as gender, ethnicity, religion, elicited a shorter P300 latency than the unfamiliar faces musical preferences, dressing styles (Hornstein, 1972; Fershtman (Wild-Wall et al., 2008). and Gneezy, 2001; Platow and van Knippenberg, 2001; Levine Related studies using neuroscience to investigate consumer et al., 2005; Stürmer et al., 2006; He et al., 2009; Rand et al., 2009), ethnocentrism are scarce. Until now, most scholars have used and it is a process which starts from childhood to adulthood a consumer ethnocentrism tendencies scale approach, which is (Ben-Ner et al., 2009). Individuals from a cultural collectivism composed of 17 items, to study consumer ethnocentrism (Shimp like the Chinese and Africans often see their role as individuals and Sharma, 1987). Although the concept of ethnocentrism refers in relation to the family or society that they identify themselves to the preference of in-group over out-group products regardless with and, therefore, support in-group members (Chen et al., of the group category (nation, ethnicity, etc.), in practice the 2002; Hustinx and Lammertyn, 2003; Kemmelmeier et al., 2006; majority of consumer ethnocentrism research focuses mainly Pierre and Matondo, 2012). on the nation-state group. For example, in different countries, In the current study, the priming stimuli consisted of two consumers driven by patriotism tend to prefer local products ethnic group pictures, Black African and Asian Chinese people. over imported ones (Shimp and Sharma, 1987; Vida et al., 2008; Generally, during race facial differentiation the subjects have Wise, 2017). Only a few studies used the category group, other some difficulty in identifying the other races’ face, which than a nation-state, such as Vida et al.(2008) who distinguished is known as other race effects (Sporer, 2001; Hugenberg between the in-group and out-group based on the culture- et al., 2007). Some previous research that studied faces of ethnic groupings. Moreover, consumer ethnocentrism could be an in-group and out-group race concluded that three event- driven by other factors than patriotism. These other factors related potential (ERP) components could be distinguished could include perceived vulnerability to a threat (Wise, 2017), between in-group and out-group race faces, comprising the brand and product category (Balabanis and Siamagka, 2017) early negative component which reflects the face processing and cultural identity (He and Lu, 2015). The theory of planned and peaking around 170 ms after the stimulus (N170), the behavior (TPB) is frequently used to predict the purchase negative wave recorded between 200 and 350 ms after the intention and brand preference, which claims that attitude, stimulus (N200), and the late positives potential appearing subjective norms and the ability to do any specific behavior, around 300 ms after the stimulus (P300; Dickter and Bartholow, determines the behavior intention (Ajzen, 1991). Typically, 2007; Walker et al., 2008). Furthermore, the ERP components subjective norms are divided into two parts, the descriptive P200 and the N200 were linked with early attention processes norm, and the conjunctive norm. Descriptive norm refers to while the P300 was associated with the evaluative categorization an individual doing what the others do, i.e., the individual processes (Ito et al., 1998; Dickter and Bartholow, 2007; Walker adopts the others’ opinions and behaviors (Stok et al., 2014). et al., 2008). During the categorization of the in-group and Conjunctive norms are defined as what an individual should out-group faces, the existing results showed that the own race do, is determined by acceptable and unacceptable social group faces elicited larger N200 at the frontal area while the other behavior (Stok et al., 2014). Although the original TPB did not race faces elicited larger P200 and P300 at the parietal region distinguish between the two types of norms, the descriptive norm (Dickter and Bartholow, 2007). Another experiment which used was nonetheless often used to predict the behavioral intentions an in-group face, an out-group face and a non-face as stimuli (Borsari and Carey, 2003). The term social conformity was used found that N170 distinguished the face stimuli from the non-face widely by neuroscience scholars to describe the effect of the stimuli, and the N250 elicited by the in-group faces was larger group opinion on individual behavior (Stallen and Sanfey, 2015). than that of the out-group faces (Ito et al., 2004). In addition, However, EEG studies found that the conformity related to the the same study revealed that only in the people with higher brain activities correlated to the two brain areas, the striatum levels of prejudice the late-positive potential (LPP) peaking and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Bartra et al., 2013; Stallen at partial electrode differentiated between the in-group and and Sanfey, 2015). On the other hand, several studies have linked out-group faces (Ito et al., 2004). However, the familiarity and EEG frontal asymmetries to consumer choice prediction and contact with the other culture-ethnic group could reduce all purchase intention (Ambler et al., 2004; Vecchiato et al., 2011). racial bias aspects (Malinowska, 2016). Previous researchers, Besides, ERP components were associated with categorizing for example,